Proud but angry
anticapitalist special interest dump incoming
capitalism corrupts everything it touches, even weather forecasting
US private media companies like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel take publicly available forecasting information provided by the National Weather Service, a publicly funded government service, and repackages it into their own forecast and disseminates the info.
In 2005, AccuWeather lobbied to attempt to ban The National Weather Service from sharing predictions with anyone besides commercial entities. In 2012 they successfully blocked the NWS from producing a free app for the public.
This allows there to be an inaccessible filter on free, timely, and accurate weather information and forces it to be distributed through for profit apps. Even free apps are bogged with ads and delayed alerts.
The G Word with Adam Conover covers this extensively and I highly recommend watching that episode or reading the transcript here [x] but I will sum it up, starting with an episode quote:
"Imagine a future where extreme weather warnings live behind a pay wall." In 2015, AccuWeather received warnings from the NWS that a tornado was heading towards Moore, OK, a city that has been decimated by F5/EF5 tornadoes twice. They only notified users that were paying for the app.
So what can you do about it?
- Get your local forecast directly from The National Weather Service's official site weather.gov !
- Follow your local meteorologists on social media, especially if you're in an active weather area.
- If you're in tornado prone areas, follow storm chasers on social media and check the Convective Outlook during your tornado season.
- Get a NOAA weather radio or tune to your local NWR station! They are the most reliable source of weather information in the event of a power outage and the coverage area is extensive. They cover all hazards including severe weather, wildfires, dust storms/haboobs, heat/cold warnings, and any other warnings the NWS would put out. Here is information specifically for Deaf/HOH accessibility.
In 2020, for the first time since being laid in 1772, a section of a King’s College lawn the size of just half a football pitch was not mown. Instead, it was transformed into a colourful wildflower meadow filled with poppies, cornflowers and oxeye daisies.
[Researcher Dr Cicely Marshall] found that as well as being a glorious sight, the meadow had boosted biodiversity and was more resilient than lawn to our changing climate. The results are published today in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence. Despite its size, the wildflower meadow supported three times more species of plants, spiders and bugs than the remaining lawn - including 14 species with conservation designations, compared with six in the lawn.
The meadow was found to have another climate benefit: it reflected 25% more sunlight than the lawn, helping to counteract what’s known as the ‘urban heat island’ effect. Cities tend to heat up more than rural areas, so reflecting more sunlight can have a cooling effect - useful in our increasingly hot summers. “Cambridge has become more prone to drought, and last summer most of the College’s fine lawns died. It’s really expensive to maintain these lawns, which have to be re-sown if they die off. But the meadow just looked after itself,” says Marshall.
The worst part of human adulthood is being your own zookeeper
I want to stuff a pumpkin full of raw meat and roll it around my enclosure, but I also know that I’ll have to be the one to clean up afterwards :-(
Take steps to minimize the mess! Put a cheap, disposable plastic tarp down in the area you'll be rolling it around. And.. Maybe recognize your species-specific needs and cook the meat first
Actually, if we're going for species-specific enrichment, a pumpkin may not be the best solution. We're not built for pouncing on prey or batting it around. We're distinguished by our persistence hunting and tool use
What you should do is put a pack of jerky on top of a roomba, go in another room and count to ten like you're playing hide and seek - or use this time to find a tool to use - and when you come back, try to catch it by setting a trap or by pinning it down with a stick
When you want a greater challenge, have a friend drive an RC car full of jerky around the park, and chase it until it runs out of battery
Aliens trying to cure the Clinical Depression of Humans aboard their ships by theorising Earth-Specific enrichment activites...
I feel like it might work tho
Since my big Languages and Linguistics MEGA folder post is approaching 200k notes (wow) I am celebrating with some highlights from my collection:
Africa: over 90 languages so far. The Swahili and Amharic resources are pretty decent so far and I'm constantly on the lookout for more languages and more resources.
The Americas: over 100 languages of North America and over 80 languages of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Check out the different varieties for Quechua and my Navajo followers are invited to check out the selection of Navajo books, some of which are apparently rare to come by in print.
Ancient and Medieval Languages: "only" 18 languages so far but I'm pretty pleased with the selection of Latin and Old/Middle English books.
Asia: over 130 languages and I want to highlight the diversity of 16 Arabic dialects covered.
Australia: over 40 languages so far.
Constructed Languages: over a dozen languages, including Hamlet in the original Klingon.
Creoles: two dozen languages and some materials on creole linguistics.
Europe: over 60 languages. I want to highlight the generous donations I have received, including but not limited to Aragonese, Catalan, Occitan and 6 Sámi languages. I also want to highlight the Spanish literature section and a growing collection of World Englishes.
Eurasia: over 25 languages that were classified as Eurasian to avoid discussions whether they belong in Europe or Asia. If you can't find a language in either folder it might be there.
History, Culture, Science etc: Everything not language related but interesting, including a collection of "very short introductions", a growing collection of queer and gender studies books, a lot on horror and monsters, a varied history section (with a hidden compartment of the Aubreyad books ssshhhh), and small collections from everything like ethnobotany to travel guides.
Jewish Languages: 8 languages, a pretty extensive selection of Yiddish textbooks, grammars, dictionaries and literature, as well as several books on Jewish religion, culture and history.
Linguistics: 15 folders and a little bit of everything, including pop linguistics for people who want to get started. You can also find a lot of the books I used during my linguistics degree in several folders, especially the sociolinguistics one.
Literature: I have a collection of classic and modern classic literature, poetry and short stories, with a focus on the over 140 poetry collections from around the world so far.
Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia: over 40 languages and I want to highlight the collection for Māori, Cook Islands Māori and Moriori.
Programming Languages: Not often included in these lists but I got some for you (roughly 5)
Sign Languages: over 30 languages and books on sign language histories and Deaf cultures. I want to highlight especially the book on Martha's Vineyard Sign Language and the biography of Laura Redden Searing.
Translation Studies: Everything a translation student needs with a growing audiovisual translation collection
And the best news: the folders are still being updated regularly!
them: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MEANS HUMANS MUST BE INDIVIDUALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT
biologist:
Like literally the only reason we didn’t go extinct is because we are aggressively social creatures who community organized and helped each other when faced with disasters that drove other species over the brink.
(Like we’re so aggressively social that we looked at APEX PREDATORS and went ‘they look soft! Friend????’)
(The answer was yes because wolves are also aggressively social and they adopted the strange tall not-wolves just as eagerly.)
humans @ wolves: holy shit these things are so cute i wonder if they’ll let us pet them?
wolves @ humans: holy shit these things are so cute i wonder if they’ll pet us?
Just in case people want source, here you go: humans are compelled to help each other in disaster situation, humans feel an innate urge to help others. We will help strangers too, not just family, and it has been tested.
Also we’ve always taken care of our elderly and disabled. When life was literally “hunt and gather every day to live”, we saw value in taking care of those with disabilities.
apparentlyeverything
reblog to make a libertarian mad
This is not a drill
This is IMPORTANT especially if you live in the USA or use the internet REGULATED by the USA!!!!
Do not scroll. Signal boost. Reblog.
Reblog WITHOUT reading if you really can't right now, I promise all the links and proof are here. People NEED to know this.
( I tried to make this accessible but you can't cater to EVERYONE so please just try your best to get through this or do your own research 🙏)
TLDR: Homeland Security has been tying our social media to our IPs, licenses, posts, emails, selfies, cloud, apps, location, etc through our phones without a warrant using Babel X and will hold that information gathered for 75 years. Certain aspects of it were hushed because law enforcement will/does/has used it and it would give away confidential information about ongoing operations.
This gets renewed in September.
Between this, Agincourt (a VR simulator for cops Directly related to this project), cop city, and widespread demonization of abortions, sex workers, & queer people mixed with qanon/Trumpism, and fascism in Florida, and the return of child labor, & removed abortion rights fresh on our tails it's time for alarms to be raised and it's time for everyone to stop calling us paranoid and start showing up to protest and mutual aid groups.
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
These are the same feds who want to build cop city and recreate civilian houses en masse and use facial recognition. The same feds that want cop city to also be a training ground for police across the country. Cop city where they will build civilian neighborhoods to train in.
Widespread mass surveillance against us.
Now let's cut to some parts of the article. May 17th from Vice:
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using an invasive, AI-powered monitoring tool to screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum, which can in some cases link their social media posts to their Social Security number and location data, according to an internal CBP document obtained by Motherboard.
Called Babel X, the system lets a user input a piece of information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return, according to the document. Results can include their social media posts, linked IP address, employment history, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone. The monitoring can apply to U.S. persons, including citizens and permanent residents, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, according to the document.
“Babel data will be used/captured/stored in support of CBP targeting, vetting, operations and analysis,” the document reads. Babel X will be used to “identify potential derogatory and confirmatory information” associated with travelers, persons of interest, and “persons seeking benefits.” The document then says results from Babel X will be stored in other CBP operated systems for 75 years.
"The U.S. government’s ever-expanding social media dragnet is certain to chill people from engaging in protected speech and association online. And CBP’s use of this social media surveillance technology is especially concerning in connection with existing rules requiring millions of visa applicants each year to register their social media handles with the government. As we’ve argued in a related lawsuit, the government simply has no legitimate interest in collecting and retaining such sensitive information on this immense scale,” Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told Motherboard in an email.
The full list of information that Babel X may provide to CBP analysts is a target’s name, date of birth, address, usernames, email address, phone number, social media content, images, IP address, Social Security number, driver’s license number, employment history, and location data based on geolocation tags in public posts.
Bennett Cyphers, a special advisor to activist
organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard in an online chat “the data isn’t limited to public posts made under someone’s real name on Facebook or Twitter.”
The document says CBP also has access to AdID information through an add-on called Locate X, which includes smartphone location data. AdID information is data such as a device’s unique advertising ID, which can act as an useful identifier for tracking a phone and, by extension, a person’s movements. Babel Street obtains location information from a long supply chain of data. Ordinary apps installed on peoples’ smartphones provide data to a company called Gravy Analytics, which repackages that location data and sells it to law enforcement agencies via its related company Venntel. But Babel Street also repackages Venntel’s data for its own Locate X product."
The PTA obtained by Motherboard says that Locate X is covered by a separate “commercial telemetry” PTA. CBP denied Motherboard’s FOIA request for a copy of this document, claiming it “would disclose techniques and/or procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions”.
A former Babel Street employee previously told Motherboard how users of Locate X can draw a shape on a map known as a geofence, see all devices Babel Street has data on for that location, and then follow a specific device to see where else it has been.
Cyphers from the EFF added “most of the people whose location data is collected in this way likely have no idea it’s happening.”
CBP has been purchasing access to location data without a warrant, a practice that critics say violates the Fourth Amendment. Under a ruling from the Supreme Court, law enforcement agencies need court approval before accessing location data generated by a cell phone tower; those critics believe this applies to location data generated by smartphone apps too.
“Homeland Security needs to come clean to the American people about how it believes it can legally purchase and use U.S. location data without any kind of court order. Americans' privacy shouldn't depend on whether the government uses a court order or credit card,” Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement. “DHS should stop violating Americans' rights, and Congress should pass my bipartisan legislation to prohibit the government's purchase of Americans' data." CBP has refused to tell Congress what legal authority it is following when using commercially bought smartphone location data to track Americans without a warrant.
Neither CBP or Babel Street responded to a request for comment. Motherboard visited the Babel X section of Babel Street’s website on Tuesday. On Wednesday before publication, that product page was replaced with a message that said “page not found.”
Do you know anything else about how Babel X is being used by government or private clients? Do you work for Babel Street? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
Wow that sounds bad right.
Be a shame if it got worse.
.
.
It does.
The software (previously Agincourt Solutions) is sold by AI data company Babel Street, was led by Jeffrey Chapman, a former Treasury Department official,, Navy retiree & Earlier in his career a White House aide and intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, according to LinkedIn.
🙃
So what's Agincourt Solutions then right now?
In essence, synthetic BATTLEVR training is a mixture of all three realities – virtual, augmented and physical. It is flexible enough to allow for mission rehearsals of most types and be intuitive enough to make training effective.
Anyway the new CEO of Babel Street (Babel X) as of April is a guy named Michael Southworth and I couldn't find much more on him than that tbh, it's all very vague and missing. That's the most detail I've seen on him.
And the detail says he has a history of tech startups that scanned paperwork and sent it elsewhere, good with numbers, and has a lot of knowledge about cell networks probably.
Every inch more of this I learn as I continue to Google the names and companies popping up... It gets worse.
Monitor phone use. Quit photobombing and filming strangers and for the love of fucking God quit sending apps photos of your actual legal ID to prove your age. Just don't use that site, you'll be fine I swear. And quit posting your private info online. For activists/leftists NO personally identifiable info at least AND DEFINITELY leave your phone at home to Work™!!!
WARNING: READ THE BELOW DOWN TO THE GREEN LINE OF TEXT
Read this bit. After the green text, you can continue scrolling. This is breif. I usually like to stay silly on this blog, but this is important. Like the end of our world important type shit. So please read this or at the very least, reblog it. Skip my bit if you need to, or even just reblog the original bit. My writing is less important here.
For my tiny little contributions, I'll try my best to put the situation into perspective in layman's terms, so if you want a simplified version, but not to a degree of downplaying the problem, mine will try to comply. I will warn you: this is not a substitute for the above. If what you read here worries you: stop reading my post and go to the original post, because you should be worried and you need to be properly informed.
It begins on the next line.
I'm not claiming I'm the smartest wet mouse in the bag, but I like to consider myself one particulate of competent and knowledgeable enough about politics to understand a red flag. This is coming from someone whose entire brand is being a dumbass, so trust me when I say, I don't think I'm smarter than you. I'm not talking down to you. If anything, I'm talking to a peer or up to you.
So, of course, right after saying I don't think I'm smarter than you; let's talk about my favorite book of all time and the subject of everyone who thinks they're smarter than you: 1984
For context, I've read this book 10 times and counting. This is my autistic comfort place.
Y'know, 1984, right? The 1984 everyone keeps spouting about and constantly and incorrectly pointing to whenever they don't agree with a politics?
Because the above is 1984 happening to us.
This one thing is the 1984, and I'm dead serious about it.
Yes, 1984 talks about censorship being bad.
Yes, 1984 talks about the government being bad.
Yes, 1984 talks about a giant talking head that's at the forefront of everything also being bad.
But 1984 isn't just a "here's what bad stuff to not like about politics"
1984 is about the eradication of anonymity, and if that doesn't run your blood cold, you need to double check and see if your url is your first and last name or not. Because if it is: change it, and if it isn't, with this it might as well be.
A death of anonymity goes far beyond just "oops, people know my name now ecks dee" and it affects every person. "Oh but I don't use my real name online!" Doesn't matter. Is your phone connected to wifi? Do you have your location turned on on it? Did you access tumblr at work and then back at home at any point in time? Have you ever left your phone unlocked while talking shit about the government? Do you own an Amazon echo? If the answer is yes to any of this, then under this renewal, you could lose your anonymity.
All your fetishes. All your shit talking. All your bad mouthing. All your confidence. All your wrong answers. All of this will be tied to your name and a picture of your face and viewable by the government. And if a group of unpaid geeks can find a person who lives on the other side of the world with nothing but a picture of his face in a decade or so without this technology, imagine how quickly the taxpayers backed government armed with this kind of technology could find where you sleep at night.
Feeling aptly up to speed on being scared? Good, it gets worse.
1984 is about the monitoring and systematic filing of every citizen under the government's power. 1984 is about the government knowing specifically who they are governing down to the single person. 1984 is about the government knowing who you are and what you are doing, and whether it is what they want you to be doing or not. Whether that's war crimes, abortions, masturbating, talking bad about the police or government officials, taking gods name in vain, saying bigoted or racist things, or even just not supporting whatever party is in office right now.
If the Democrats decided they wanted to eradicate all Republicans in one fell swoop, they'd know exactly which houses had sheep's blood over the mantle and which didn't, and it works vice versa.
If the Republicans decided they wanted to find every single lqbtqa+ person/supporter and send a hit man to their households, they could do that.
This isn't a devisive political problem anymore. Both sides should be worried about this. This isn't "ooh, the republicans/democrats are against this, so we should be for it!" No, this is the political equivalent to the atomic bomb being created. This is the societal ultimate nulifier in play here.
If the government continues to get access to things like this, it will be taking another step closer to a line drawn in the sand a long time ago, one that every position of power starts a mile away from and will eventually cross if left unmanaged. Crossing this line is how governments topple. Not because we'd revolt. Not because they'd be overthrown. In fact, likely, neither of those would happen. It would no longer be a government because, simply, what they would be doing wouldn't be a government any longer.
That isn't governing the people. That's ruling with an iron fist.
And say what you will about the government; but a shitty government is far better than a regime.
Go read the top post. Go get informed. Go stop this from happening with me.
You telling me that Jack Black would not be 1000% down to be kidnapped by the muppets for a shenanigan, or possible a hijink?
Mr. The Frog still sends me more than “we all agreed a celebrity is not a people”
Hey yall, please help my native queer family make rent this month. We're incredibly short from falling behind on rent & bills last month when my gf was on medical leave and didn't get as much pay from the state as we planned.
Please help us pay rent by June 7th so we don't fall behind on other bills.
cahapp: $CEOofAntifa
PayPl: click here
Veno: CEOofAntifa
$205/886
Unless we can get rent paid this first week of June we'll probably end up in the same position for july again.
Pleeeeeeease help us not do that. We have $159 to our name right now. We have bills we're behind on from not being able to pay anything cuz we needed the money for May rent (which was paid on the 26th) and now need the money leftover for June rent.
We only have $82 on our EBT card. We still need to pay for gas and toothpaste and soap and to do laundry and other bills. Every single thing we pay for cuts into rent money and it's due in 2 days and other things will start getting shut off soon after 😅
If we don't pay this soon we won't have money to spend on even FOOD when we run out of EBT.
So please help, even if it's just a reblog
Consider helping a poor queer family pay rent this PRIDE month!
$297/886
June 1st
Please keep reblogging!! We're 1/3 of the way to our goal!!
FedNow will be released July 1st and when it's implemented the US government will be able to see ALL exchanges of money that aren't cash payments. Which means if you're disabled and on SSI or SSDI and are trying to crowdfund your expenses (because SSI and SSDI don't pay enough to survive) the US government will be able to see ALL of that and deducted that from your SSI payments (meaning you'll get less money).
Please sign this petition to end FedNow.
I'm not even on disability or at risk of needing it. But this is a huge invasion of privacy. Especially because a lot of my meds have to be ordered and delivered by mail (I get them from a special compounding pharmacy) which means I don't have the option of cash payments and it's none of the government's goddamn business how much my meds cost.
I looked to see if it was open to public commentary but it's not (commentary closed in 2021). So please call your representatives. Even if you have conservative representatives. Even Republicans are hating this proposal as a huge invasion of privacy.
Call them. Email them. Don't let that social anxiety get to you. They're YOUR representatives and they are here to represent YOU.
-fae
https://explore.fednow.org/ <---- more about FedNow
Everyone should be calling and emailing their representatives about this. It is not mandatory as of now so we still have time. Make a big deal out of it like the RESTRICT Act, they go hand in hand. If even conservatives are going against the restrict Act after all the emails and calls they received, we can do the same thing with this. You can use chatgpt to help you write a letter if you need it.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
This is your annual warning that *there will be no warning* when fire season is about to start. Nobody’s going to post “Hey everyone, remember, fire season starts next Friday!”. The state will just catch fire. You will wake up and the sky will be orange. It could be tomorrow, it could be July, it could be August, we could get incredibly lucky and skip it altogether. If you hope to buy an indoor air purifier before fire season, if you want to ensure everyone in your home has a P100 for going outside, if you want to stockpile water and you haven’t already, the time to do it is today.
Oh right this is getting notes again. Fuck.
this post is why i got a p100 last year
Yearly reminder to check your go-bags and evacuation plans
When I was fourteen I got ten minutes notice of evacuation from the McLure fire in B.C.
Literally got told “you have ten minutes. Fill your laundry basket with anything you want to take with you. We might not be coming back.”
You want to be prepared BEFORE that point.
Of all the fucking notifications to get. Tantallon is on fire. Next town over from me. 800+ Hectares. There’s another 1000 or so burning down by Barrington and a smaller fire in Bedford.
That first and that last are suburbs of Halifax. So if you was thinking it can’t happen to you, it damn well fucking can.
Oh. Yeah. The Tantallon Fire started on Sunday. It hit 100 Hectares and destroyed 10 homes within 12 hours. Within 24 hours it was 780 Hectares. It’s now over 800 with 200 structures destroyed.
YOU WILL NOT HAVE TIME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE.
So. Go Bag. Important documents. Couple changes clothes. Any medication. Any stuff you need for your pets. Keepsakes.
Keep it somewhere accessible.
Get it in the car first. Then if you have time you can add to it. I have a few bags prepped. They’ll go in the car in order of importance as circumstances permit.
Not only is June pride month it’s also men’s mental health awareness month! Check on your homies mental health and well being. Straight, gay, or whatever your orientation may be your mental health is important. Millions of men suffer from depression, anxiety, and all sorts of other mental health issues but don’t know how to talk about it in an open manner. Reach out and look out for one another!
Not feeling like your best self? A basic self assessment:
✨️Have you eaten?
🌼Have you hydrated?
✨️Did you take your meds?
🌼Have you had a break?
✨️Have you been outside?
🌼Have you had good sleep?
✨️Is it environmental?
🌼Have you had a lot on?
✨️Do you feel overburdened?
🌼Has their been big news?
✨️Is there a pressured deadline?
🌼Have you seen friends/family lately?
✨️Have you been too sedentary?
🌼(optional) Hormones?
What would you add to this list? How do you check in with yourself?
Clay-Busting Plants to Fight Soil Compaction
If you’re like me and struggle with clay soil, these 5 clay-busting plants will work through your heavy soil to loosen, aerate, and enrich it with organic matter. Use these annual plants as a cover crop or interplanted among your other crops.
1. Artichoke, Cynara scolymus
Artichokes grow deep, sturdy taproots that break through heavy clay soil. They also make a great plant to chop and drop as mulch and add lots of organic matter to benefit your soil. Artichokes come in both annual and perennial varieties, but short-season annual varieties will grow quickly and yield a harvest of edible flower buds from mid-summer to mid-fall. Harvest the buds and then chop and drop the entire plant in place, leaving the roots to decompose. Note: Artichokes are related to thistles and the plants are spiny so wear gloves when handling them!
2. Daikon Radish, Raphanus sativus
Daikon radish is an amazing clay-busting vegetable since they push up to 24 inches into the soil! Sow in spring, summer, or fall and harvest some for eating about 50 days later. Let the ones you don’t harvest grow until they flower (the flowers attract beneficial insects!) and die back. Once they’ve died back just chop them off at ground level and let them break down. As your daikon radishes rot they break up the clay and build up humus!
3. Cowpea, Vigna unguiculata
Cowpeas or black-eyed peas have vigorous, dense, fibrous roots that work to break up your clay soil. They’re also nitrogen fixers and enrich the soil! Sow in the spring as a summer cover crop. Cowpea’s quick growth helps suppress weeds and the flowers attract beneficial insects! If you want to eat your cowpeas (you can harvest them fresh like green beans or let the pods dry to harvest them for soup beans) cut them back in the fall and let them break down. If you want to grow cowpeas for maximum soil benefits through root growth and nitrogen content, cut the plants back while they’re still flowering and before they set pods. Or do some of both!
4. Mustard, Brassica spp.
Mustard is a superstar for clay-busting thanks to it’s massive, fibrous root system. Mustard also produces TONS of biomass, making it a great chop and drop green manure/mulch. It also helps to suppress soil-borne pathogens! The leaves, flowers, and seeds are edible and chickens love it too. *If you don’t want mustard spreading, timing is super important because it will disperse vigorously if you allow it to go to seed. Cut mustard back before it seeds, while it’s still flowering and incorporate the plant matter into the soil. Mustard also has an allelopathic effect so wait about 3 weeks after chopping to plant new crops in it’s place.
5. Annual Sunflower, Helianthus anuus
Even cheery sunflowers will bust up your clay soil! They make a great cover crop especially when you choose varieties that don’t need to be staked, they’ll grow deep vigorous roots into compacted soils. Sunflowers also attract HUNDREDS of varieties of insects and are a great choice for both the maintained garden and natural areas. Cut the plants back in the winter, leaving the roots to decompose in the soil. Sunflowers have an allelopathic effect so it’s important to let them decompose over the winter before you plant in spring.
What else can you do to bust up clay?
Broadfork: The broadfork is a great tool for hand tilling (and much more gentle than regular tilling). Use the broadfork when the soil is dry and work backwards so you don’t step on and re-compact the loosened soil.
Digging Fork: The digging fork is great for long term maintenance of your clay soil. Use it to poke holes in the garden to help aerate the soil every spring and fall.
Soil Amendments: Once the soil is loosened up, add soil amendments so the rain can wash them in. Lots of organic matter is needed for clay soils: compost, green manure, leaf mold, biochar, worm casings, and greensand are all good options!
Cover Crop or Mulch: Bare clay soil = compaction. After you’ve loosened the soil and added soil amendments, keep that beautiful soil covered! Sow your crops or add shredded leaves, alfalfa hay, or straw (just make sure it’s not contaminated by herbicide!!) as mulch.
[Image description: a sepia-tone gif focused on someone handwriting a letter. a butterfly sits on the paper’s edge, opening and closing its wings. /END ID]
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okay, I’m feeling overly ambitious today if you can’t tell, so let’s do a thing that’s probably gonna end in disaster 👍
a one week challenge starting tomorrow. the goal is simple. post original content once a day for 7 days. I can do any of the following
- follow-up on my german aromanticism series
- create new linguistic insight posts
- journal style entry, any language
- describe gen III pokemon in japanese (would like to start this as a new series???)
- anything in review of romanian or icelandic basics
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I know it seems like I haven’t been keeping to this, but I’ve actually been putting my energy towards a single post. I can’t wait to share it when it’s done :D
Writer's Guild of America voted to strike, good for them
Get ready for a whole new shitload of shitty "reality" shows, too.
My prediction remains the same -
- Lots of reality shows.
- Lots of scripts that were buried and stockpiled.
- Lots of international productions, because Netflix would rather subsidize Japan and Korea than pay the writers.
Buckle up.
The dynamic's likely to be a tad different this time, though. Because we have something now that wasn't present in 2007/8:
Powerful social media.
Let's see how the production companies / producers do with hundreds of thousands of angry streaming consumers clogging their feeds, every livelong day, with shouts of ALL THE WRITERS WANT IS TWO CENTS ON THE [STREAMING] DOLLAR!
I've been through two of these now, and I'm here to tell you, this ain't gonna go any hundred days. (Especially since there are signs that the producers have already lost control of the narrative, and a strike hasn't even started yet.)
I support the Writer’s Guild union strike.
Hi Michelle! I was wondering if you could point me to some decent resources for learning Irish (maybe you have a tag for it)? Complete beginner here, obviously 😔. No worries if not & thank you <33
hi!! I am always so so happy to talk about Irish my dear, and I'm so excited to see that you have an interest in learning it!
if I could give you a general road map of the language, I would say, that although Irish is a little removed from continental European languages, you'll find a surprising amount of useful connections between Irish and the languages you already know. we do have a decent amount of loanwords as well. the thing people think will be difficult is the spelling, but actually, Irish is extremely phonetic, with no 'irregular' pronunciations.
note: resources that say "Irish" or "Irish Gaelic" or "Gaeilge" are for the same language, but if it says "Gaidhlig" or just "Gaelic", it's Scots Gaelic. for identification: Irish has accents that go áéíóú and Scots Gaelic has accents that go àèìòù :) and Manx Gaelic is different again! we're all related but different
the key outline is:
- the word order is verb - subject - object
- Irish has a case system but it's quite simple, and there is no different between nominative and accusative, so we always stick to this word order
- léigh mé an leabhar (layg may on lau-ur) = [read] [I] [the] [book]
- for the verbs, I recommend learning the indicative, present, and past of the regular verbs first. everything is very regular - there are two conjugations, one for short verbstems and one for long verbstems, and a slightly different spelling depending on the vowels used - you echo the vowels of the stem in the ending :)
- there's a word for "the" = "an" (pronounced 'on'), or for plurals, "na", but no word for "a"
- a lot of languages change the end of words to show changes (chair, chairs), and we do too, but we also change the beginning sometimes; this can take a little while to Get but it's honestly much easier than it sounds
- pronouns: mé - tú - sé - sí - sinn - sibh - siad
- don't worry about dialect! we all understand each other and all resources I've ever seen teach the standarised dialect
for a general introduction, there is the Langfocus video, and the Learn Irish channel, especially this video explaining the broad structure of the grammar. less technical - this video of Dónall Ó Héalaí talking about why he loves Irish :)
the best free digital resource in my opinion is the bitesize irish blog. they explain everything. there is a newsletter as well, for beginners, and it says it's free - you definitely get a free e-book.
also you can use @ salvadorbonaparte's mega drive or the libgen download here but I think the Routledge Colloquial language series are generally some of the best language coursebooks you can find :)
there is a course for beginner's from DCU on FutureLearn which provided a very good foundation (especially because it has audio), and you get free for a month <3
if it's an option, try to watch some TG4 - they have lots of really nice Irish-language shows, nature documentaries, etc. you might need a VPN to access some of the videos but in principle it's supposed to be accessible from every country. there are ALWAYS subtitles.
RTÉ (the Irish national broadcaster) has an Irish page, which is a mixture of articles about the language in English, and Irish-language articles.
dictionaries online:
- teanglann.ie -> most detailed and very easy to use. searches three dictionaries :) also, they have a pronunciation database with three audio files of every word in the dictionary. and they have a declension table for every noun. hello. best website of all time.
- focloir.ie -> has newer vocabulary that's missing from teanglann, detailed entries with nice modern example sentences.
of course you might not want this immediately, but it's good to know about tuairisc.ie, which publishes short - often very short - news articles in Irish. it could be good for reading practice :)
same - archive.org -> Irish-language texts -> 1. a direct link to those published after 2000, and 2. a direct link to bilingual books. and gaeilge.ie have a list of free audiobooks in Irish in case you want to just listen to get the feel of it?
p.s. if you ever decide to do a paid course, Coláiste na Rinne is cheaper than Gael Linn as just as good ;)
that's everything I can think of right now, but please, ask me anything that occurs to you! <3
Every person need to be taught disability history
Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.
Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”
Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.
Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.
Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.
Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”
Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.
Teach about us.
Oh! Oh! I got one! Meet Edward V. Roberts-
Ed Roberts was one of the founding minds behind the Independent Living movement. Roberts was born in 1939, and contracted polio at age 14, two years before the vaccine that ended the polio epidemic came out (vaccinate your kids). Polio left Roberts almost completely paralyzed, with only the use of two fingers and a few toes. At night, he had to sleep in an iron lung, and he would often rest there during the day as well. Other times of the day, he breathed by using his face and neck muscles to force air in and out of his lungs.
Despite this being the fifties, Roberts' mother insisted that her son continue schooling. Her support helped him face his fear of being stared at and ridiculed at school, going from thinking of himself as a "hopeless cripple" to seeing himself as a "star." When his high school tried to deny him his diploma because he had never completed driver's ed, Roberts and his mother fought the school and won.
This marked the beginning of his career as an activist.
Roberts had to fight the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for support to attend college, because his counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever work or live independently. Roberts did go to school, however, first attending the College of San Marino. He was then accepted to UC Berkeley, but when the school learned that he was disabled, they tried to backtrack. "We've tried cripples before, and it didn't work," one dean famously said. The school tried to argue the dorms couldn't accommodate his iron lung, so Roberts was instead housed in an empty wing of the school's Cowell Hospital.
Roberts' admittance paved the way for other disabled students who were also housed in the new Cowell Dorm. The group called themselves "The Rolling Quads," and together they fought and advocated for better disability support, more ramps and accessible architecture like curb cut outs, founded the first formally recognized student-led disability services program in the country, and even managed to successfully oust a rehabilitation counselor who had threatened two of the Quads with expulsion for their protests.
After graduation from his master's, he served a number of other roles- he taught political science at a number of different colleges over the years, served on the board for the Center for Independent Living, confounded the World Institute on Disability with Judith E. Heumann and Joan Leon, and continued to advocate for better disability services and infrastructure at his alma mater of UC Berkeley.
Roberts also took part in and helped organize sit ins to force the federal government to enforce section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability. The sit-in occupied the offices of the Carter Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco and lasted 28 days. The protestors were supported by local gay rights organizations and the Black Panthers. Roberts and other activists spoke, and their arguments were so compelling that members of the department of health joined the sit in. Reagan was forced to acknowledge and implement the policies and rules that section 504 required. This national recognition helped to pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
Roberts died of cardiac arrest in 1995 at the age of 54, leaving behind a proud legacy of advocacy and activism. Not bad for a "hopeless cripple" whose rehab counselor thought he was too disabled to ever work.